Amazon is coming. And the online retail juggernaught is opening stores. Australian retailers should be afraid and chief marketers need to get as close to their CEO as possible to head it off.
Milosh Milisavljevic parter at management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company told delegates at the ADMA global forum in Sydney this week that "CMOs should be thought of as part of the executive team and be directly involved with decisions. Become the bonding agent that connects the organisation. The CMO is one of – if not the – logical roles to be that bonding agent.” In simple terms that meant "buddy up with your CEO" to make it happen.
While gettting the boss on side isn't information for which most CMOs would be willing to pay a consultants fee, Milisavljevic indicated that there were other fundamentals of business that were lacking within organisations, namely an internal marketing plan and how marketing drives the business.
“There are a lot of organisations that have a marketing plan,” he said. “A lot less have a plan for marketing and a marketing blueprint – a clear definition of how marketing supports the organisation and strategic priorities. This is a critical component in driving a clear and pervasive role for marketing. As a new marketer, this is the first thing you would want to do in your organisation, in the first 90 days.”
Milisavljevic said the role of marketing is shifting from a stand-alone business unit to being integrated across the whole organisation, able to deliver insights and data across the entire business.
But, he said in the digital age, retail marketers in particular must not forget bricks and mortar.
“A lot of conversations we have with clients are about driving sales and service online, and the role of the multichannel experience is sometimes overlooked,” he said.
Outlining the importance of multichannel, he noted how even the biggest beast in pureplay online retail had recognised the need for the physical.
“Amazon is coming. It is coming after consumers and coming after businesses. Amazon is coming with a proposition that addresses all the reasons why people shop in stores. It will have a showroom in its mobile app, immediacy with same-day delivery, and to top it off it is opening stores.”
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